Workshops

To schedule a workshop, please email contact@adadevelopersacademy.org with the following information:
* a title/description (or at least idea) of the specific activity you would like to do with our students
* a couple possible days/times from our Volunteer Opportunities Calendar
* the main 'nuggets' that you'd like students to walk away from your presentation with

As a Workshop Presenter, you will provide training to students on coding skills/tools and/or soft skills.

Your role will be to:

know your audience is a group of people who are new to coding--students began their cohort with very little to no experience coding; Ada provides them with 6 months of intensive classroom experience in Ruby, Rails, HTML/CSS, and JS followed by a 5 month industry internship; please define terms, do not assume that they know something already, and do not refer to concepts as something that "programmers should already know", as something that "you can't get a job if you don't understand", or as “easy”. Things that are easy to you may be difficult to someone else, and trivializing them trivializes a person who struggles with them.

prepare an interactive activity for our students that broadens their skill set or increases their awareness of topics related to the tech industry

field questions at the end of the lecture and provide resources for students who are interested in learning more

You bring expertise to our classroom that gives students the ability to learn more and do more. A diverse collection of workshops allows each student to find specific topics that they are passionate about and also provide assistance to our instructors by covering topics they may not be familiar with/have the time to prepare for.

What to expect

Workshops typically happen on Thursday afternoons. We would like to aim for 1-2 workshops a month. If no time slots are open on the calendar, that means that week has been filled.

Approximately 26 people --> students, instructors, staff

With your permission, absent students usually request that we record speakers so they can watch them later. Generally we use QuickTime’s Screen Capture to do this and then we can share the presentation internally.

What Ada will provide
When you come for your presentation, we will provide:

White boards

Projector

HDMI/Mini DisplayPort connectors

Format of your presentation
We understand presentations are highly individual, but here are some general guidelines to consider:

Workshops should be fall between 1.5-3 hours, including prep, the activity itself, and Q&A at the end.

The activity MUST be interactive

Tips for being an effective Presenter

General Tips

Start and finish strong - Begin with a bang. Listeners tend to remember what they hear first and last. Begin with a surprising statistic, a startling statement, a vivid anecdote, a rhetorical question, or a provocative quotation.

Direct your audience’s attention to the most important points you are making

Sustain audience engagement

Break up your talk every 10-15 minutes to revitalize the audience’s attention. At this break, ask the audience a question, give them a simple problem to solve, have them discuss concepts with a neighbor and then share back their thoughts, or have them try something on their own.

Use concrete examples and simple syntax. Speaking in theory/abstractly for a long time is hard to follow

Integrate active learning into your lecture.

Remember that DELIVERY is more important than CONTENT - If your delivery isn’t interesting, your content will be hard to process.